Expansion name: Retribution 1.1 Point Release
Release date: February 19th, 2013
Expansion theme: Battlecruiser rebalancing, Black Ops boost, Cloaking Device boost, Ancillary Armor Repairer, Armor Plate boost, in-space route map
Last update of this post: 19.02.2013
Patch notes: available
SQLite Database dump: build 473478
Battlecruiser rebalancing
The Spaceship Command skill tree will not be changed until the new Summer Expansion Source: Fozzie’s forum post. Battlecruisers will however get their tiericide treatment very soon. Some ships are getting boosted (former tier one), some are getting nerfed (former tier two) and some are getting adjusted (vide: Myrmidon). Source: yet another Fozzie’s forum post.
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PROPHECY: 5% bonus to all Armor Resistances 10% bonus to drone damage and hitpoints Can fit Warfare Link modules Slot layout: 5/4/7, |
FEROX: 5% bonus to all Shield Resistances 10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret optimal range Can fit Warfare Link modules Slot layout: 8/5/4, |
BRUTIX: 10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret damage 7.5% bonus to Armor Repairer effectiveness Can fit Warfare Link modules Slot layout: 7/4/6, |
CYCLONE: 5% to Heavy and Heavy Assault Missile rate of fire 7.5% bonus to shield boosting amount Can fit Warfare Link modules Slot layout: 7/5/5, |
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HARBINGER: 10% bonus to Medium Energy Turret Damage 10% bonus Medium Energy Turret capacitor use Can fit Warfare Link modules Slot layout: 7/4/6, |
DRAKE: 5% bonus to all Shield Resistances 10% bonus to heavy and heavy assault missile kinetic damage Can fit Warfare Link modules Slot layout: 7/6/4, |
MYRMIDON: 7.5% bonus to Armor Repairer effectiveness 10% bonus to drone damage and hitpoints Can fit Warfare Link modules Slot layout: 5/5/6, |
HURRICANE: 5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret damage 5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret rate of fire Can fit Warfare Link modules Slot layout: 7/4/6, |
From patch notes: “As a part of these changes, extra materials have been added to the build requirements of several Battlecruisers. These extra materials do not return when the ships are reprocessed.”
Similar change hit Mining Barges during their rebalancing. Minerals are simply added as “additional materials”. This is CCPs prefered solution to combat possible speculation as covered in this post about barges. If CCP added the minerals as normal materials, people would simply buy off entire supply of battlecruisers from market now, and then reprocess them post patch to multiply the minerals. Yes, dear players, this is because we are a bunch of smartass opportunists 😉
Black ops boost
Source: Fozzie’s forum post.
All Black Ops battleships will get a boost to jump range, which base will be 3.5 ly (+75% range boost to current 2.0 ly). Fuel bay has been increased to 1250m3 (+25% increase), whereas Jump Portal fuel need has been reduced by 25%. These changes will certainly make Black Ops quite a bit more useful (I was however arguing that black ops were useful already – in this post).
Cloaking device boost
- CPU need of Covops cloak have been reduced to 100, while coverts, recons and blockade runners get their bonus adjusted to “-20% CPU needed for cloaks per level”.
- Covert Cynosural Field can now be fitted to any ship that can fit Covert Ops Cloaking Device
Armor tanking changes
Source: Fozzie’s forum post.
Armor Rigs
- Change the penalty on all active armor rigs (Aux Nano Pump, Nanobot Accelerator, and the new Nanobot Overcharger) to increase the powergrid use of local armor reps by 10% instead of reducing ship velocity. Note this is increasing the PG use of the reps by 10% (or 5% at Armor Rigging V) not decreasing the total PG of the ship.
Plates
- New skill: Armor Upgrades. This skill reduces the mass penalty of all armor plates by 5% per level. (Int/Mem, rank 3, requires Mechanics 3) This skill affects all plates (including 1600mm)
- All 800mm, 200mm and 50mm plates mass penalty is reduced by 20%
Armor Reps:
- Reduce the PG need of all Medium Armor Repair units by 20%
- Reduce the PG need of all Large Armor Repair units by 10%
Ancillary Armor Repairer
- When not loaded with Nanite Repair Paste, has 75% repair amount as a T1 Armor Repairer
- When loaded with Nanite Repair Paste triples rep amount (so reps for a total of 225% a T1 repairer when loaded)
- Same cycle time and fittings as T1 reps
- Always uses the same cap as a normal (T1/T2/Named) Armor Repper
- Small reps use 1 paste per cycle, mediums 5, larges 10. Each holds 8 cycles of paste. Reload time is 1 minute just like an ASB
- Can only fit one such mod per ship
- Incursus gets its rep bonus reduced from 10% to 7.5%
Crimewatch 2.1
With the introduction of the new Crimewatch it is now impossible to start a consentful 1 vs 1 by stealing from each others containers. Doing so after the release of Retribution will result in a global Suspect flag, so anyone in the system can legally attack you. To rememdy this, Team Five O has introduced a way to start a consentful duel in high security space by giving you a limited engagement flag against each other. Source: dev-blog.
New limited edition ships
A bunch of new ship makes their way to New Eden. First of them is Society’s of Conscious Thought (Jovian) Gnosis – see this post for more details about it.
Ship stats are available in Data Dump Explorer:
Pirate rookie ships & Faction Destroyers
Ship collectors and market speculators get another set of new toys to play with: pirate rookie ships. It seems that all the ship skins which art departament made during the V3 process will eventually make their way to the game.
Ship stats are available in Data Dump Explorer:
UI changes
- New Information Panels now show all the system information in a consistent way. Source: dev blog.
Each panel has three modes: normal, compact and collapsed. Normal mode is the one we are used to and is the most verbose one. Compact mode shows the most important information and the collapsed mode hides the panel completely. Information is still accessible by hovering the mouse cursor above the top row of icons. It is also possible to re-arrange the panels by dragging the icons in the top row.
It is worth noting, that a Notification Panel will join the existing ones in a further release. It will work in a similar way to Notification Center in Android and iOS, by aggregating all notifications into one configurable list.
- Route displayed on the background stars.
There is a new autopilot setting “Show route path in space”. When enabled, it will draw the route in space, connecting the stars in the space scene nebula. When you click the screen below you will also notice that the stargate actually connects the system you’re in to the rest of the path.
- You can now click Alliance logos to zoom in on them.
- Skill Points will now be displayed in Medical Window, so you no longer have to open the Character Sheet to know which clone upgrade to buy.
- Corporation Recruitment process has been further streamlined (source: dev-blog)
- Applying character has to confirm that they still want to join once their application has been accepted
- Welcome mail can now be customized, for example to contain TeamSpeak and Corp Wiki addresses.
War changes
- War history in Corporations and Alliances will be divided into groups
- Active Wars
- Factional Wars (active)
- Pending Wars
- Finished Wars
- Allies will not have to wait 24 hours before joining the war – this cooldown will be reduced to 4 hours.
- Inactive characters are not taken into account when calculating war cost – remember to log on all alts when you get a war dec!
- Peace after surrender – when one entity surrenders to another, both corporations are forced into 14 days of peace, when no war can be started against each other.
Source: dev-blog by Punkturis
PS. If you find any information inaccurate or out of date, feel free to contact me. This post is meant to be a “by players – for players” source of information.
